* Speaking of “our German ancestors,” the views of Tacitus, and “Germanic institutions,” in France, Tocqueville echoes the views of his protégé Gobineau. This idea of two disparate French races is usually ascribed to the class-minded, extreme hereditarian historian Henri de Boulainvilliers (1658–1722). Born in Normandy (and, therefore, by some accounts a descendant of the Vikings), Boulainvilliers was “an aristocrat of the most pronounced type” according to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. He saw the aristocracy as the descendants of Franks from Germany and the peasants the descendants of mongrel Gauls and Romans.